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Nairo Quintana, Colombia’s Giro d’Italia hero, has announced that he will compete in the 2015 Tour de France, cycling’s most prestigious road race, national radio station W Radio reported on Friday.

Coming off his Giro d’Italia win, Quintana confirmed that he will take part in the Tour de France next year, as well as this year’s Tour of Spain, set to being in August, and the World Road Race.

“I was sick, things were going badly, but I have a team that has always supported me, and didn’t let me fall, and said to me, we will keep fighting.”

Quintana labelled the prestigious Tour de France as “a race that I love”, and cited the strong support he continued to receive from his team Movistar in order to win the race in the coming year.

The cyclist highlighted that after his recent Giro d’Italia win, widely regarded as the world’s second most prestigious race, he was feeling, “calmer,” and would try to project that feeling in his future competitions.

“The Giro d’Italia [race] was a spectacular, it was made for Colombians,” Quintana said in an interview with Blu Radio, referring to the dominance that Colombian riders experienced during the competition.

It is notoriously difficult to compete in both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in the same season due to the physical toll of competing in the events. Both races are three weeks long with little recovery time between the two events. Quintana had already announced that he would not be competing in the Tour in 2014.

The cyclist also praised his team, Movistar, revealing some of the difficulties experienced during the Giro, saying that they supported him when he was unwell and gave him the energy to keep on going.

“I was sick, things were going badly, but I have a team that has always supported me, and didn’t let me fall, and said to me, we will keep fighting,” he said.

“Nairoman”

In an interview with Blu Radio, Quintana also announced that he was in training for the third of the three Grand Tours of European Cycling, the Tour of Spain.

“This week we’re going to take several steps that we believe are important and decisive for the Tour of Spain,” he said. The Vuelta a España as it is known, begins on the 23 August.

Since his 2014 Italy triumph, Colombians have come to christen him as, “Nairoman,” in adulation of his feats of super-heroic endurance which have been at the forefront of a recent dominance of world cycling by Colombians.

The 2014 Giro confirmed Colombia’s position as a preeminent power in world cycling as they completed a remarkable 1-2 place, with Quintana’s fellow countryman, Rigoberto Uran, taking the second overall spot in the competition. A host of other Colombian riders showcased their credentials with numerous individual stage wins, such as Fabio Duarte and Julian Arredondo who secured the King of the Mountains jersey after taking most points in those stages.